The Moose Runs For City Council

As the summer approached, the Moose was starting to wonder what big adventures he was going to get into with his friends this season. The summer was his favorite time of year, the sound of running streams combined with the warmth and brightness of the sun felt like being constantly enveloped by a favorite song.

Typically, in the summers, the Moose liked to do things like swim and hike and eat mushrooms. But this year he was going to try something different. This year the Moose had decided he was going to run for city council. 

The decision to run for city council was something the Moose had been thinking about since that morning. It was a dream of his to one day sit on the council with other such luminaries like...

Like...

... Well, the Moose couldn’t remember the names of any of his city council people at the moment but he was determined that this problem wouldn’t happen to another young animal running for city council. Because from here on everyone could just say, “Blah, blah, blah... and city council luminary’s like, THE MOOSE!”

The Moose knew he had a tough road ahead of him. Political campaigns were notoriously brutal, especially in this part of the state. He couldn’t do it alone. He needed a political whiz kid, a wunderkind, a genius, but more importantly, he needed someone close-by as the deadline to file candidacy paperwork was only 11 hours away. 

“Okay, we can do this, let’s get to work,” said Tolly, the bear, and the Moose’s best friend. The Moose had immediately thought Tolly would be the perfect person to hire as his campaign manager because the two had been planning on hanging out today anyway. 

“Hell yeah!” The Moose responded, excited. 

“The first thing you have to do is stop saying ‘hell yeah.’” The Bear announced. 

“But, I love saying hell yeah...” 

“Right, but to be on city council it’s not necessarily about what you love, it’s about what the special interests love. Try saying, ‘I concur,’ the special interests love that.”

The Moose was glad to have such a good friend to help guide him through this election process. He would have never known that he had to stop saying ‘hell yeah’ if he wanted to be on city council. How silly would he have looked making a campaign speech and just letting out a 'hell yeah' just like that, completely willy-nilly? 

“Well, the first thing we’ll probably need is a sign.”

“Hell Yea— “ the Moose started, “I mean — I concur...”

“Great, we're making good progress. So what do we think our sign should say?”

“Hmm... well I think we should start by discussing the issues and then work backwards to a catchy slogan, right?”

“Trust me, the less we talk about the issues the better, it’s the special interests! I’m telling ya, they don’t care. What do you think about just a sign with a question mark?” 

“Just a question mark?” The Moose was unsure where the bear was going with this so he let the bear say more...

“Well if people see the question mark they might think, ‘hmm I wonder what that’s all about?’ Then they come over to see us and are like what’s with the question mark? And we tell them, "We’re the questioning candidate," that way the voters will know that we’ll question everything. We’re on their side. And now we got ‘em!”

The Moose was not convinced that this was a good idea for a sign...

“But," The Moose started, "If you hold a poster over your head with a giant question mark on it won’t you just look like a character in a video game who is confused?”

The bear hadn’t thought of that. This Moose had a keen eye for detail and knowing what’s going through the voters' heads. Maybe the Moose would make a good city councilman after all. 

The Moose though was beginning to feel like it was a bad decision to run for city council and maybe his idea had gone off the rails here. The Moose believed that he had a good grasp of the issues and had long felt the city council did not represent the interests of himself nor any of the people in his generation. He wanted to help, but after today, he decided maybe this was not his way. 

In any case, the Moose appreciated the bear setting him straight. The Moose continued to pretend to work on the campaign with the bear but, he did not bring it to the bear's attention when the Moose noticed the clock had already ticked passed the filing deadline.